It’s time for certain Leeds players to step up – or be dropped by Bielsa

The QPR game felt like we’d gone back to 2015 or any other year of 15th place boredom and that’s a place I’d never like to visit again. Unsurprisingly, Bielsa named the same team that started the game against Bolton and although consistency in a team selection is not a bad thing, anybody who has watched Leeds all season would know that we’re looking a little bit stale at the minute.

(I’d like to point out that I love Marcelo Bielsa and compared to him I have pretty much no knowledge of football, but that doesn’t mean that he or his team are immune to any sort of criticism)

When you’re playing three games in six days, it’s natural to rotate the team a little bit. If we’d had beaten QPR there’s no chance Bielsa would be changing anything for the game against West Brom but after that disaster, we could be in for a few surprises on Friday.

Onto the main point of this article, the players. Various members of this squad are letting themselves down massively and for whatever reason, Bielsa won’t drop them. Luke Ayling has been disappointing this season to say the least, especially after he returned from injury. You can’t fault his effort but some of the mistakes he’s making regularly are just shocking, there’s no reason to be passing the ball straight out of play to a wide open teammate. He’s supposed to be a good attacking full-back but he doesn’t create many goals at all going forward and he seems to get beaten by wingers far too easily at the moment.

So it would make sense to give Ayling a rest, right? Now we have some options, too. Gaetano Berardi, Jamie Shackleton and Stuart Dallas would all be preferred currently. Considering we haven’t had a clean sheet since records began, bringing in Berardi might be a good shout against high-scoring West Brom. That would in turn free up Jamie Shackleton to play instead of Mateusz Klich, who has been carried in so many performances in 2019. Nobody seems to mention it, but he is a ghost in a lot of games, Shackleton more than deserves his chance to play his natural position. His pace, directness and energy could really inject some life into a Leeds team that seems to need it badly.

Jack Harrison is another one is a big issue at the moment, he’s possibly the most inconsistent player of all time. On occasion he looks top quality but far too often like last night, you barely even notice him. We’re missing Jack Clarke dearly, so we’re not very blessed in that department. A move that could happen is playing Barry Douglas at left-back and moving Alioski further forward.

We’re still in a good position and with Sheffield United still to play, automatic promotion is still in our hands. But let’s not standstill and wait for something to change, make it happen.